Bunika is in beta!

"I have been waiting for this moment for months and finally it's here!" Well, maybe I should reserve such a quote for the final print, but it's on my screen now and it feels appropriate!

The alpha of Bunika was finished in late January, and after a very productive few days in Bratislava and Vienna - and several more weeks of revisions - we are finally at the beta! Good God, these things take a LOT of time, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I had enjoyed pretty much every minute of it :)

So what is the point of the beta and why are we doing things this way at all? The project, as explained on the Roadmap page, goes through several stages of revisions, some private, some public. We are now at the 'most' public beta phase, which means that [pretty much] anyone can read the thing in beta and comment on it in detail OR just give very general thoughts. I say "pretty much anyone" because I have to already know the readers in some capacity, which I think [and hope] is reasonable!

Beta reads will go on from now until summer, specifically till late June or the middle of July. After that point, the thing goes into revisions for August and September and then the all-important agent submission process begins at the start of October. We are still going for publication towards the end of 2025, so things are pretty much bang on-track as of the time of writing.

As to WHAT has changed in the book from alpha to beta, the answer is both a lot and not a lot! There have been lots and lots of what I consider to be minor changes to things like flow, consistency, spelling, grammer, clarity, plot points, etc etc, but I think the most majorly obvious change has been with regard to artwork. The book now contains a fair bit of original art - this was not initially planned, it was just a fleeting thought - but these fleeting thoughts [especially in the creative world] sometimes become things that work! So there are now more than 25 pieces of new original art in the book which haven't been seen anywhere else yet [no, neither on this website or Deviant Art] :)

From now until the end of the beta reads I will try to take a back seat [as much as I can do anyway] and just let the thing happen before revisiting it in the middle of the summer. There will probably be no more blog posts till then but I DID promise any sign-ups I wouldn't clog their inbox and that is still the case. Less is more, after all.

If anyone wants to be part of the beta reads, please contact me by heading over to the Contact page. It's still mercifully cold here in London this April [currently 8C as I write this this evening] so let's enjoy it while it lasts: the next update will most likely be in the warm throes of the summertime :)

Thanks to everyone who has signed up to be part of the beta: the thing will be coming your way very shortly. We'll be back in a few months' time at the next stage of revisions!

P.S. if you do want to know who said the quote in the first paragraph, search YouTube for "Excited train guy, New York" - it was something of a viral meme in the 2010s :)

P.P.S. The art on this page is original and part of the book, you'll see why in time!